Royal Astronomy

Astralwerks;

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Zzzt. Beeeeoo. The room filled with the glow of 80 small, flashing LED
lights. The equipment was strewn throughout the room, connected by standard
black coax cables. An 8" green monochrome monitor displayed a flat, straight
line that would hop to life, mapping a thousand soundwaves, as soon as Mike
Paradinas desired it. A moment of calm silence ensued, and then, with the
tap of a single button, the LEDs switched from red to green. Here was the
finished project.

The stacatto filled Mike Paradinas' studio. Labeled instrument Xyb044 took
a leading part on viola. Bells chimed over the strings as the lights flashed
in rhythm. "Scaling." Paradinas mouthed the word, titling the piece that had
cost him all of Monday, a day which might otherwise have been spent eating
unsalted rice cakes and enjoying the warm comforts of "Interior Motives" on HGTV.
It was to be the opening track in his final opus, Royal Astronomy, and
it sounded great with those out- of- control skittering, jazz breaks.

"My work will transcend the greatest composers known to man," Paradinas schemed.
That's when the fuse blew. "Fuck!" Mike raced to the laundry room, flipped
the switch marked "Studio1," and shot back upstairs to see what damage the outage
had caused. The room was silent, aside from the sound of the mainframe's rebooting
hard disk. The equipment had been reset and now sat eagerly awaiting Paradinas'
next command. Mike checked the programming. All the music was there... but where
were the underlying subtleties, the neat effects, and most importantly, where was
the rhythm?! Poor Mike hadn't saved his progress.

In the days that followed, Paradinas plunged into the depths of his deepest depression
since "Alf" was removed from NBC's Monday night lineup. He spent weeks in denial,
teary and uninspired, until it hit him: he could get by pitching the largely
percussionless album as a new direction for his work. Elaborate electronic chamber
music! This would certainly be the next big thing. Of course, some songs did seem
to miss his trademark drill-n-bass beats. For these select few tracks, he would
program some standard beat filler just to spice things up. And by the end of the day--
bang!-- Royal Astronomy.

Alright, that's probably not what really happened. But listening to this
record in contrast to the sensory overload of 1997's Lunatic Harness,
and even his earlier work on albums like Bluff Limbo and In Pine
Effect, it's clear that something snapped in the ambition department of
Paradinas' neural net. Here, we're presented with 14 tracks of mostly lush
orchestration and very little beat. Now, I don't know about you, but if I want
to hear a symphonic masterpiece, I'm probably not gonna go digging through the
record store's "club" section to locate it.

And, to put it as gently as possible, Paradinas is no Ravel. I've been
listening to this record for months, trying to locate its place in modern
electronic music, and it just doesn't fit anywhere-- not because it's so
vastly different from what's being done out there these days, but because
it's so tossed- off. It's sad to see an artist as obviously talented as
Paradinas release an album that sounds like it took a weekend to record.

Royal Astronomy offers very little for fans of Paradinas' work, and
next to nothing for the electronic music fan-- it's \xB5-Ziq without the \xB5-Z.
It's hard to say at this point whether \xB5-Ziq has lost his edge. I mean,
it's conceivable that this record is just a transistion to something
completely new and different. But one thing's for sure: this album is
boring as shit.